This document provides a history of typography from print to digital formats. It discusses the origins of typography in print, with Johannes Gutenberg creating the first metal movable type in the 15th century. Modernist typographers in the early 20th century experimented with size, spacing and design to encourage new values. Digital typography later borrowed from print typefaces but also allowed new possibilities with layout and multimedia. The development shows typography must relate to its functional purpose and reading environment in each era.

1. History of Typography
(History of Digital Font)
Robin Chin
November 7, 2006

2. What is “Typography?”
• The art and technique of printing
• The study and “process” of typefaces
– “Study”
•
•
•
•
Legibility or readability of typefaces and their layout
Attractiveness of typefaces and their layout
Functionality and effectiveness of typefaces and their layout
How a typeface/layout combo “enhances” or “honors” content
– “Process”
• Artistic composition of individual type
• Setting and arrangement of type
• Basic elements of “desktop publishing”
– Typeface
• A full set of type made to a particular design (size and style)
• A font

3. Some Typeface Examples
• Quick brown foxes jump - Times New Roman
• Quick brown foxes jump - Bookman Old Style
• Quick brown foxes jump - Courier New
• Quick brown foxes jump - Trebuchet MS
• Quick brown foxes jump - Comic Sans MS
  - Webdings

4. Typography and Print
• Typography is defined in relation to print
• History of (Western) printing
– Johannes Gutenberg
•
•
•
•
Europe’s first printer (42-line Bible, 1455)
First designer of typeface
Gothic type: modeled after German script
Goal: To replicate the look of a manuscript Bible
– Aldus Manutius
• Designed “Italic” type (“of Italy”) in the 1490s
• Modeled on handwriting of Venetian clerks
• Compact form allowed for printing of smaller books

5. Typography and Print
German
Script
Gothic
Type
Manutius’
Italic

6. Typography and Print:
Creating Type
Basic
letterform for
capital letters
Stone
Engravers’
Style:
As few curves
as possible

7. Typography and Print:
Creating Type
Geofroy Tory
•
•
•
16th Century French
Designer
Influenced by architecture
and the work of Leonardo
da Vinci
Designed his typeface on
the proportions of the
human body
“Anatomy of a letter” - Some terms eventually associated with the
(Not features of type design
potentialTory, but an example of a full set of typeface)

8. Typography and Print:
Creating Type
 Design of the typeface
 Creation of physical “type”




The
“form”
Type: (n.) piece of metal in which letter(s) are cast
Gutenberg’s innovation: movable, reusable type
See Robin Chin’s website on “Portability”
From physical type to printed page
{




The composing sticks: words formed, placed into sticks
The galley: sticks placed together, spaced apart
The chase: galley placed inside, wedges add margins
The form: inked, then placed in the printing press

9. Typography and Print:
Creating Type

10. Typography and Print:
The Power of Typography
• Theory: “Typography honors content”
• Related theory: typography honors industry and content
• Italics example: designed to fit business innovation
• Modernist theory: Typography as functional with content
• Modernist era: late 19th - early 20th century
• Political potential of (experimental) typography
• Different “rules” of typographic design - to encourage and
discourage certain values in the reading public
– Some political artistic groups of the time
• Futurist writers (Italy) - destruction is beautiful and necessary!
• Imagist poets (England) - the image itself is speech!
• Constructivists (Russia) - modernism is functionality!

11. Typography and Print:
The Power of Typography
• Typography takes an
• F.T. Marinetti
active Italian poet and founder of Futurism
– role in the content
– From Les mots en
• Visible as well as audibleliberté futuristes, 1919
• “I am
poetic elementstarting a typographic revolution, directed above
all against the idiotic, sick-making conception of the oldfashioned Poetry Book, with its hand-made paper, its
• Helped inspire later
sixteenth century style, decorated with galleons,
Minervas, Apollos,
modernist typographers to great initials …”
• “The book must
use strong contrasts in be the futuristic expression of our
futuristic thought.
type sizes and design, and Better: my revolution is against
among other things
new angles of typewhich is inthe so-called typographic harmony of
the page,
complete opposition to the style
which the page allows.”

12. Typography and Print:
The Power of Typography
• El Lissitzky
Sans-serif
– Russian constructivist and major artist of “new typography”
– “Topgraphy of Typography,” from the magazine Merz, 1922
• “On the printed page words are seen, not heard.”
Bold, basic colors of Expression - visual, not phonetic.”
• “Economy
• “The new book demands the new writer. Ink-pots and goosequills are dead.”
Use of photography
• “The printed page transcends time and space. The technology)
(new-ish printed
page, the infinity of the book, must be transcended. THE ELECTROLIBRARY.”
– Distinct break from old typography: total discarding of
decorative concepts and a turn to functional design

13. Typography and Print:
The Power of Typography
• Importance of “new typography” today
– A case where the form of printing adapted to fit the
conditions of modern life
– Declares that “form is not independent, but grows out
of function (purpose), out of the materials used
(organic or technical), and out of how they are used.”*
– Declares that clarity and not beauty is the essence of
typography
– Declares that asymmetry is generally more optically
effective than symmetry
* Jan Tschichold

14. Typography and Print:
The Power of Typography
• Importance of “new typography” today
– Considered blank space to be as much as a formal
element of typography as black type
– Continued to encourage standardization
– Blurred the line between “high art” and “mass media”
– Blurred the distinction between image and language
– Predicted the future importance of typographic design
to advertising

15. Typography Today
• Typography in the digital environment
– New process of typeface design
• computer programs vs. hand design and casting
– New possibilities for layout with the screen
• computer programs vs. galleys, etc.
– New elements of expression
• text and images
• sound and animation
• screen brightness and contrast
– New concept of materiality
• pixels vs. ink
• links, buttons, IP addresses

16. Digital Typography
• Some digitally adopted typefaces
– Times New Roman
• 1932, The Times of London Newspaper
– Bookman Old Style
• 1858, A.C. Phemister in Edinburgh, Scotland
– Courier New
•
•
•
•
1955, Howard Kettler
Designed as a typewriter face
Commissioned by IBM
Design as a monospaced font (hence easy to align as
columns of text) makes it a valuable typeface for coding

17. Digital Typography
• Some digitally created typefaces
– Trebuchet MS
• 1996, Microsoft typeface designed to be readable at small
sizes and at low resolutions
• Based on humanist sans serif typeface designs of the
1920s and 30s
– Comic Sans MS
• 1994 (developed), released as part of Windows 95 Plus!
Pack
• Based on the generic lettering style of comic strips
  (Webdings)
• 1997, designed in response to web designers’ need for
easy method of incorporating graphics in their pages

18. Conclusion:
Online Reading Practices
• Lesson from early history of print
– Typographic design is an essential issue in the printing
revolution and print culture
• Lesson from modernist typography
– “Form is not independent, but grows out of function
(purpose), out of the materials used (organic or technical),
and out of how they are used” - i.e. new reading practices
• Lesson from the development of digital fonts
– As the webpage borrows from the printed page, so digital
font has borrowed heavily from printed typefaces
– As the webpage develops further uses distinct from the
page, so grows the need to revisit typography, its history,
and its future

19. Conclusion:
Online Reading Practices
• Aesthetics and computing courses
– MAS 962: Digital Typography
• Records of digital typographic development
– Microsoft typography research group
• Digital typography programs
– Font-Lab
• Publications on digital typography
– Donald Knuth’s Digital Typography series

20. Some Printed Sources and
Resources
• Drucker, Johanna. The Visible Word: Experimental
Typography and Modern Art, 1901-1923 (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1994).
• McGann, Jerome. The Visible Language of
Modernism (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1993).
• Tschichold, Jan. The New Typography: A Handbook
for Modern Designers, trans. Ruari McLean
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995).